Today's Tom Sawyer
by LadyJanelly
Summary: AU SPN DA crossover: Three years after Devil's Trap, Sam finds a little boy on the side of the road in Wyoming. Ben, Sam Winchester.
1. Chapter 1

Three years. He'd always thought he'd go back to school when it was over--finish his degree, get his life back together. But what kind of life can a man have when the only thing he sees when he closes his eyes is the puff of smoke as he shoots his own father, the surprised look in his dad's eyes as the bullet from the Colt tore through him. How can he go back to California and be _normal_ when he wakes up screaming more nights than not, when he's alive in a world where Dean bled to death in his arms?

His existence narrows to the cab of dad's old Sierra, the next town, and the next job. He's too stubborn for suicide, too determined to make the Dark pay for the Winchester blood it's claimed. He's not careless when he hunts, but he's not afraid either. And he's tired. And Wyoming's the ass-end of nowhere. And his entire left side aches from being thrown into a damn tree.

It's been hours since he last saw another vehicle. The air is so clear that everything's sharper than it should be. There's a dreamlike quality to the night that threatens to lull him into a sense of unreality. The white of the snow on either side of the road reflects his head-lights back at him, a never-ending glare.

When the boy stumbles out of the tree-line just ahead of his high-beams, Sam's first thought is that he has to be a ghost--that no real kid could survive out here for even minutes, barefoot, dressed in nothing but a hospital gown.

_You don't brake for ghosts_ _on an icy road_ his rational brain is saying, sort of like a normal person thinks _Don't swerve around squirrels, it's too dangerous and not worth it._

The boy turns towards the light, his eyes unfocused, dazed. He collapses in the middle of the lane, and Sam _knows_ it's not a living person out there. And he's still swerving and pumping the brake. There's a limit to how fast a big pick-up can stop. The back-end sweeps around and goes off the road, but it doesn't hit anything, and it doesn't flip.

When the world stops spinning, the kid's still laying there, not replaying the scene, not getting up to eat Sam's eyes or something. The only motion to be seen is the drifting white plume of exhaust coming from the truck.

Sam grabs a silver knife, a shot-gun full of rock-salt and a blanket before stepping out into the frigid air.

The kid _still_ isn't moving and Sam starts to run. The cold cuts through the light jacket he'd been wearing in the heated cab in two seconds. First-aid for hypothermia, shock, and frost-bite all cycle through his head. He crouches beside the small body, feeling for a pulse with one hand while he wraps the blanket around it with the other. The boy's heart-beat is faint beneath his fingers and he scoops the kid up in his arms; _warm_ becomes the first order of business.

Back in the truck, Sam cranks the heat up as high as it goes and strips the kid out of his snow-damp gown. From behind the seat he gets one of his own clean t-shirts and wrestles unresisting arms into it.

Skin so white it was almost blue begins to flush a healthy rosy color by the time Sam's checking fingers and toes for the probability of falling off. He's surprised that none of them are stiff and black. All in all, the kid looks pretty healthy. He's scratched all to hell and his feet are torn up like he'd been running for days. He looks to have been well-cared for before this, though, if Sam's any judge.

Mystery boy is fit, fed and muscular for his age. Sam turns the small hand palm-up and has a flash of nostalgia at the calluses. Junior's in training for something, growing up strong and tough. The scale of the exercise is a little off though, even by Winchester standards. Sam chafes some warmth into the small fingers and looks around at the icy stillness. A sense of wrongness is growing in him, getting stronger as minutes pass and nobody comes out to make sure the little guy is alright.

Then he glances down and sees the tattoo. The side of his face twitches at how wrong it is for there to be a freakin' bar-code on a child's neck. The warning in his head escalates to a code-red. People don't bar-code their well-loved children, no matter how fucked up that love is expressed. People bar-code things, possessions they don't want to lose track of. The boy's been running, most likely from whoever marked him like a piece of merchandise, and really, that's enough for Sam.

He uses the winch on the front of the truck to pull it out of the ditch and then concentrates on getting the hell out of Wyoming.

A dozen miles of snow and trees roll by and then Sam _feels_ the kid's gaze on him. He glances from the road and into the hazel-brown eyes, then back again.

"You okay?"

There's no reply from his passenger, but another quick look shows him the boy hasn't lost consciousness again.

"Are you hurt?" He tries.

"Sir?" And it's like the kid doesn't understand the question.

Only life with his father gives Sam the right words, the right tone.

"Are you injured?"

The boy's tone sharpens and he sits up a little straighter. "No, sir."

_Tough kid,_ Sam thinks. "What's your name?" He softens his voice, trying to connect with the boy like a person, not a soldier.

"X5-493, sir."

Well that worked great, not that he really expected otherwise. Still, it's the way Sam wants to play this, as long as he can.

"That's a serious name for a small guy." There's no response. "My name's Sam," he can feel the child's attention, but there's no outward response. "My brother, he used to call me Sammy. Do you have any brothers?"

The kid's voice is softer, smaller, when he speaks out. "Yes, sir. They call me Ben."

Sam manages to contain his grin to a small quirk of his lips. "Ben." It's more than he had hoped for. "What are you running from, Ben?" He looks over to see how the question's taken, but Ben's attention is fixed on the religious medallion that Sam's dad hung on the rear-view mirror all those years ago.

"The Bad Place,"

And yeah, Sam will have more questions for Ben later, but for now it's enough. Conspiracy theory isn't exactly Winchester turf, but he can recognize one when he steps in it.

"Get some sleep," Sam tells Ben. He plans to drive until he can't any more, then smuggle him into a hotel room, fix his wounds there.

"Yes, sir," Ben leans back against the door and closes his eyes. There's something disconcerting about a child that accepts an order to sleep instantaneously.

"It's Sam, not sir,"

"Yes, Sam," Ben answers, putting the exact same inflection on the new word.

----------

At 3am he stops the truck at a gas-station. Ben's awake before the engine dies. "Hide here in the floorboard," Sam tells him without looking down, and he does--no "Yes, sir," no noise at all. Sam covers him with the duffle full of clothes before he gets out to refill the tank.

In the little shop he almost picks up some child-size, tourist-crap t-shirt, but is glad he didn't when the clerk says "Hey, did you hear about those kids?" He plays dumb and adds a bag of corn-nuts to the growing pile on the counter.

"State trooper was looking for them a few days ago, said a hospital van tipped over on a curve in the road and by the time rescue vehicles arrived they'd all gone off on foot."

"Is that so?" Sam asks as he slides Marc Derry's Visa across the counter. He glances pointedly out the window, where it's barely ten degrees above zero. "It's a shame then. I don't think an Army Ranger could survive out there the way it's been coming down this week."

He means it, too. Collecting his bags and his mega-jolt-sized coffee, he wonders where Ben's been all this time and how the hell he's still alive. He goes back through the cold and gets back in the truck and is almost surprised Ben's still there.

"Stay down," Sam murmurs and the boy does. A few miles later he slows down and opens the quick-mart bag. "All clear. Here, dinner time." He passes over a pack of Oreo cookies, a soda and bag of Doritos.

Something in his chest goes sideways as the kid turns the packages over in his hands like he can't figure out how this is food or how to eat it. Who the hell raises a child that doesn't know the Oreo cookies packaging?

One hand on the wheel, Sam takes a package at a time from Ben and opens them with his teeth, then lets the boy explore the food at his own pace. When he looks over, Ben's eating the Doritos with more care than seems necessary; there's an expression on his face like he's still not sure what he's eating.

It's only after Ben's been quiet for a while that Sam looks over and sees him staring glassily at the windshield.

"Hey," he says, and Ben turns his attention that way. "Look, unless there's a reason for us to be awake, you can sleep whenever you need to, okay?"

Ben gives him one of those curt military nods. "Yes, Sam." But he still clings to wakefulness.

Frustration wells up and Sam wishes, not for the first time, that Dean was here. His brother may have played the confirmed-bachelor, no-use-for-kids act, but he had a way with children that was instinctive. He did pretty good raising a younger brother, Sam thought. Add in his better understanding of his dad's military mindset and he was sure Dean would know what to say and do to get through to Ben.

He keeps the Sierra's headlights pointed south, the radio on a news station and his coffee close at hand. He uses Denver to shake off any possible pursuit the same way a man on foot would use a fast-moving stream to confuse the hounds. He takes a convoluted route around the city and almost doubles back on his path to end up headed east when it's over.

He stops at a no-tell motel in Hudson Colorado. Ben slides down to the floor-board without being told to. Sam dumps out the largest duffle bag and hands it down to him.

"Get in." Something in the kid's eyes strikes a familiar chord, but he can't place it. "I'll be back in a second," he says; _I won't leave you,_ is what he means--_I won't abandon you._

Sam goes in and pays for a room. The desk clerk doesn't look at him twice. Everything feels right, quiet. He comes back and moves the truck to the parking spot nearest the room, then shoulders the bag full of seventy-five pounds of small person.

His bruised side protests the weight, but there's not a peep from the bag, even when he stumbles and it bounces off the door-frame.

When Ben climbs out of the bag in the well-lit room he looks like a kid who's been on his own for maybe a day in the middle of spring. Not out-doors for half of a week in the dead of winter.

"Go get a shower," Sam suggests, and receives the expected "Yes, Sam" as Ben snaps off to the bathroom.

While Ben's cleaning up, Sam salts the door and wards the room, then goes to the truck for clothes and first-aid supplies. His t-shirt is ridiculously large on Ben, but it'll work for him to sleep in.

He's reluctant, almost afraid to touch the kid, not eager to see evidence of another kind of abuse. Ben barely seems to acknowledge it as Sam cleans the scratches--doesn't flinch even when the peroxide bubbles or when Sam has to scrub the gravel out of the cuts on the soles of his feet. He's running a fever; Sam guestimates one ibuprofen should do it. Ben pops it down his throat without question.

Sam's washing a smudge of dirt and blood off of Ben's cheek when it registers--a similarity he can't ignore or blow off. It's there in the color of Ben's eyes and the shape of his face, in the scattering of freckles across his nose. _Dean. _It cuts like a blade, the old hurt made new again. For a second, Sam thinks he's lost his mind, seeing what isn't, what can't possibly be there.

After Ben's bunked down for the night, looking so small in the exact center of the queen-sized bed, Sam goes out to the truck. The photo is tucked into dad's journal, the new one that he only ever half-filled. He stares down at himself and Dean, from at least twenty years ago. He stares for a long time.

In the morning he can think about all this logically. For now, he's sore and tired and the place in his life where Dean should be aches like a week-old gunshot wound.

He sits in the truck, holding the picture until he has himself under control. He wonders if dad had nights like this, separating himself from his boys so they wouldn't see his weakness, his grief--being strong for them even when it made him so alone.

When he leaves the truck, he takes the medallion off of the rear-view mirror. Ben had been looking at it earlier, he figured. Maybe he'd like to have it.

-----------------------

Sam wakes first the next morning. Ben's lying exactly where he had been the night before. He's so still that Sam's worried for a moment, but the steady rise and fall of his chest is reassuring. He takes advantage of the morning's quiet to get the first shower.

As he scrubs shampoo through his hair, Sam starts working on a plan. There's dad's way--dragging a child all over the country, leaving him in hotel rooms and ratty apartments while Sam goes out and risks his life and Ben's future by fighting supernatural creatures.

And behind door number two: Keep Ben safe. Stop hunting while he de-programs the boy and teaches him how to be normal, even if it's only an act. If anybody can teach a course in "how to not look like a freak," it has to be Sam Winchester. He's got a cell-phone full of numbers. Somebody in there has to be willing to take the boy in--maybe one of the families they've helped out over the years, one that knows there's more to the world than meets the eye.

The plan should take three months, tops.

He finishes his shower and wraps a towel around his waist.

Ben is standing at the foot of his meticulously made bed at parade rest, eyes forward, still as a statue. Sam groans and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and fore-finger. Okay, so maybe it's a six month plan.


	2. Chapter 2

The first steps of Sam's plan are easy. He buys clothes for Ben at a thrift store so nothing will look too new. Shoes, socks and underwear are acquired at Wal-mart. He's three states away from Wyoming before he lets Ben stay in the seat as they stop for gas, four when Ben comes inside and picks out the snacks he wants and five states away the first time the boy sits in a diner for breakfast.

On the road they work on the cover story together, running over the details until Sam almost believes it himself.

"What's your name?"

"Benjamin Matthew Winchester."

"Where are your parents?"

"Mom's name was Leila and she died when I was little. My dad was Dean; he was a fireman. Everybody says I look like him." He's learning just the right emphasis to put on the words, how to fish for sympathy without seeming to.

"Who am I?"

Ben grins, one of his rare genuine expressions of happiness. "You're Sam Winchester, my uncle. You've taken care of me for three years. You just got a new job in New York, and we're driving there to live, but we're taking our time to see the country before we get cooped up in the big city."

"Good job," Sam says, and hopes Dean would have approved of the fiction.

After a week of running, Sam relaxes their pace. They cruise the south, spending a few days here, almost a week there. Ben's smart, and he approaches everything Sam wants him to learn with equal enthusiasm. He can understand books targeted for young adults but goes through all the library books for younger children to make sure he has the cultural references.

He watches bad martial arts movies and complains about the combat tactics. Monster movies, even the edited-for-television versions they show on network TV, get Ben so worked up that Sam's worried. "He's letting the Nomlies kill him!" He'll shout in protest. "A jammed gun still makes a good club!" He'll stand and pace and walk up to the screen and grip his own shoulders until there are bruises, like he's trying to _will_ the characters to not be stupid. Even after Sam's turned the channel, it takes a while before Ben calms down again.

Sam gets really good at reading the TV guide, learns that any sort of alien or special effect is a Nomlie. When he asks Ben about it he hears horror stories of children that aren't perfect being taken away, drained, killed, dissected. And _then_ handed over the the monsters. If he was in any other business, he probably wouldn't believe a word of it.

He pages through dad's journals, searching for any reference to Nomlies or Wyoming or kids with bar-codes, but there's nothing. He starts a new page, writing down the bits and pieces he can glean from Ben's stories.

Ben has a notebook too, and his own pen, but Sam doesn't think he writes in it. He makes sure the boy has his own things--a duffle-bag for his clothes, a small pocket knife. He has a Velcro-closing wallet with Dean's photo inside, along with one of Sam and Ben that they get from a machine in a mall, and forty dollars hidden under the flap in case of emergencies. He takes an interest in the stars, and Sam picks up a book on astronomy from a used book store.

Ben's most prized possession though, is the Virgin Mary medallion that Sam gave him in that first hotel room. He has a faith in her, calls her "The Blue Lady." In Wilmington, they go to a Catholic church together and Ben watches the service with wide eyes. Sam's not sure what he thought of it.

"How do they make her strong?" Is his only question.

"They believe in her."

Ben's quiet for the rest of that day, but by the next he's his usual inquisitive self, and Sam doesn't think about it again.

North Florida is nice this time of year. Sam tries to expose Ben to normal kids when he can. A little boy in a park runs up during a split-second that Sam's not paying attention and pops Ben on the chest with a bright "Tag! You're it!"

"Shit," says Sam.

The boy looks up at Ben from where he ends up on the ground, too shocked to cry. Ben drops his arm and takes a step back, looking to Sam for some sort of guidance.

"Time to go," he says, and puts the fallen child back on his feet. After a wobble, he stays standing up. A concerned-looking mother is hurrying over. "Sorry!" Sam calls out as he reaches for Ben's hand. "Just a little rough-housing."

_So maybe not a family with kids,_ Sam decides on the way back to the truck.

"Why didn't he fight back?" Ben asks, because Sam's always encouraged him to be curious.

"He's not trained to, I guess."

Ben looks back to where the woman is fussing over the boy. "She must not love him very much."

"She hopes he'll never have to fight."

Ben's incredulous look says exactly what he thinks of that idea.

The next day, Sam starts training again. Not weapons or hand-to-hand, but crunches, push-ups, running. Ben joins him without being told or even asked to. Some part of Sam is happy to have quiet foot-falls beside his on the isolated woodland paths they run. At first, he sets an easy pace, a short run. Despite taking two steps for every one of Sam's, Ben keeps up. Out of curiosity, Sam pushes it one day, making it into a hard cross-country run through hill country.

There's not a word of protest from his small shadow. When he stops, he's breathing harder than Ben is.

He's not sure how he feels about that.

Sam has stopped reading the newspaper. He doesn't even plug the laptop in at the motels. He hasn't had a prophetic dream in months. The universe proves its sense of humor by throwing a monster into his path when he's doing everything he knows to avoid a hunt.

One bright spring afternoon they pull into a rough motel in Robbinsville North Carolina. It's the sort used mostly by long-distance hikers on the Appalachian Trail when they're in need of a real bed and a hot shower before another week in the woods.

There are more cars in the parking lot than there are rooms in the place, but curiosity pulls Sam in anyway.

The news at the office is that the cars are for the search party; a pair of hikers is missing, another one disappeared the month before.

It's the last night of the full moon. Sam can't let a werewolf that's killing people run loose. He doesn't feel safe keeping Ben here for a whole month. He might attract attention if he leaves and comes back in four weeks, especially if there's another killing.

In the end he does the one thing he promised himself he wouldn't do.

"Stay here," he tells Ben as night falls. "I'll be back before sunrise."

Ben nods, serious as an undertaker. "Yes, Sam."

And god, he hates what comes next, the words that'll make Ben doubt that promise, but if something does happen to him while fighting a damn werewolf, he can't leave Ben for child services.

He opens his phone and puts it in Ben's hand, shows him how to scroll down the names. "This is Bobby's number. If I'm not back by noon, call him and tell him you're Dean's son. Tell him what happened to me."

He feels like a first-class asshole when Ben nods. His "Yes, Sam," is the most subdued ever.

The search parties have packed up for the day and there's nobody in the parking lot when Sam fetches the pistol with silver bullets and the machete with a silver-edged blade out of the locked box that's on the back of the truck. It's about three steps between the back-side of the parking lot and the moonlit forest.

There are two ways to hunt werewolves. The first is to spend months figuring out who in the town is a shifter. Follow them when they make themselves scarce before sundown on a night of the full moon. Wait for the change (not because there's a weakness there; it's just easier to kill something that doesn't look like a person), and then make a move.

Sam only has time for the second method. The keen edge of the machete cuts a shallow line through his skin as he draws his forearm over it. The breeze will carry the scent. The wolf will do the rest. All he has to do is be ready when it shows up and not die.

With all of his senses open and alert, Sam moves through the woods, looking for a perfect spot to wait, and he really hopes it doesn't take its sweet time; he'd like to fight while his adrenaline is flowing and not aching cold after sitting up for six hours in the middle of nowhere.

He finds an empty campsite. It's just a flat space with a rock-circled fire-pit in the middle, but the trees are thin enough overhead that the moonlight shining down makes the dewy grass polished-steel bright. There's a grunt and a shuffle off to the side, and he turns, eyes searching for the broad-shouldered form of the werewolf.

A shape disengages from the tree-line--humanoid, but nine feet tall and lanky and twisted, and _fuck,_ not a shifter at all. He fires three rounds into the center-mass as he turns to run. God-damn forest-troll. His father's voice is echoing in his head _use feeding patterns to figure out what something is, never to eliminate something else_. He's an idiot for jumping to conclusions. Two kills does not a pattern make.

The monster closes the space between them in two steps, and his massive fist hits Sam like a cannonball. He hits the rocky ground in a boneless sprawl, trying to gather his scattered wits. _Run, roll, get the fuck out of there,_ his brain's screaming, but somehow gravity is really strong right here, and he can barely turn over to see the thing lumbering over to him.

As evil shit goes, it's definitely on the ugly end of the spectrum with its big blunt teeth, grey-green skin and knobby joints. It draws its hand up again, and Sam has no doubt it'll smash his brains out this time, then pull him apart at the joints and drag him back to its cave to eat later.

The troll's right eye explodes and it lets out a hideous howl. _Gunshot. That was a gunshot, right before..._ The wound closes. The beast blinks once and the eye is back, healed, regenerated. There's a steady _Crack! Crack! Crack!_ And each time the troll jerks as it's hit. Each shot comes from shorter range.

Moving takes everything Sam has, but he rolls over and gets a knee under himself. Ben's stalking across the clearing, the GLOCK 29 from the truck in his small hands. He doesn't have the body mass to absorb the 10mm's kick, but he rides it like a pro, pulling his aim back down after each shot, lining it back up on his target before firing again. It's almost surreal, the way he moves like a miniature SWAT member in his X-Men pajama pants and blue t-shirt. His body's turned to provide his enemy with a smaller target, his steps crossing sideways as he advances.

"Run," Sam rasps out, but his voice is barely over a whisper. All the air's been knocked out of him and he hasn't caught his breath again. The pistol only holds ten shots, and they're nothing the troll can't regenerate from while it's in the dark.

He's counting the bullets in his head. _Seven, eight, nine._ The beast makes an anguished noise. The hits may not stick, but it's gotta hurt, having your eyes shot out like that. It turns and runs. Ben puts the last round into the base of its skull. The misshapen head flops around on the too-long neck but it doesn't really slow down. And then Ben's moving too, dropping the gun and snatching up Sam's fallen machete.

That won't stop it either, not at night, and it only has to get one good hit in to splatter Ben's little body like a tomato.

"Ben!" The kid is sprinting at the troll's back and Sam does his best impersonation of his father he can manage with only half a lung's worth of air. "_Stop!" _

Ben stops short, tumbles, rolls back to his feet. The troll is deep in the woods by then. Ben crouches and moves back to where Sam's sprawled, his bare feet silent on the leaves beneath him. The fire of the hunt is in his eyes. He looks like a boy, but he isn't.

The only thing a wolf-cub can grow up to be is a wolf. In that moment, Sam sees that the only thing Ben can grow up to be is a hunter.

And then Ben's at his side, reverently touching his face. "Sam," he says, his voice full of confusion and no little awe. "Sam, you can't hunt Nomlies by yourself. They'll hurt you."

Sam nods and pushes himself to his knees. Ben helps him the rest of the way to his feet, then looks in the direction that the troll left in, eager to track it down. "No," Sam warns. "Those shots will bring people. Grab the gun and let's get back to the motel. We need the iron shot out of the truck, lighter fluid too. We'll have to wait until morning so the sun will keep it from regenerating on us."

"Yes, Sam," and there's no questioning of his orders, just an eager acceptance. The list of all there is to teach Ben starts running through Sam's head as they move off of the trail before the locals catch sight of them.

Ben's shoulder is warm under his hand, and it's been a long time since Sam had somebody to lean on.


End file.
